The Veiled Truth
by FredandGeorgeasaurusRex
Summary: "Accept the unchangeable. For otherwise, your life will be lived on broken dreams and impossible hopes." After Sirius' death, Harry is desperate to find a way to bring his godfather back. Hermione is drawn into his plans, but together they uncover something much darker than they expected...
1. Chapter 1

**After Sirius' death (OotP)**

"SHUT UP! DONT SAY THAT! YOU'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND! You say that, and act like you care but you don't, you don't get it, you don't understand. Death is but the next adventure is it? Well hey, I don't think this is the sort of adventure Sirius would have been up for, is it?! You cant just sit there, and be so calm, and we could save him, he's just behind the veil – he was so close – he can't just have gone."

All the blood was pounding, rushing, beating in Harry's ears. He wanted to hurt Dumbledore, kill him, make him feel as much pain as Harry was feeling now. His vision was tinted with red and he could hear his own breathing extremely loudly, raggedy and uneven.

"The Veil of Death is a very powerful magical object, Harry, and cannot be tampered with by a teenage boy or an old doddering man like myself."

"IT'S A BLOODY CURTAIN!" shouted Harry, his rage welling up, "What do you mean you can't do anything?! This isn't a situation where you can spout all that for the greater good crap and expect me to trot off, ready to battle Voldemort, AGAIN, and act like nothing's wrong!"

The next minute Harry spent blindly charging around Dumbledore's office, breaking all his possessions, smashing everything within sight. He stomped on the pieces, cast spells on everything in his sight. He wasn't even aware of being gently nudged out of the office by Fawkes until he snapped out of it, feeling something wet on his arm.

Fawkes had his head pressed against the crook of Harry's elbow and was crying pearly, glistening tears onto him.

"Thanks, Fawkes", Harry said softly, "But this isn't the kind of thing you can heal with tears. I appreciate it, though." Fawkes hooted in reply and flew back up the spiral staircase.

Harry feet seemed to be leading him blindly through the hallways, with one thought in his mind: get to Sirius. He didn't realise he even had a plan until he got to the Room of Requirement.

Harry whooped, and ran up and down outside the door very quickly, whilst thinking 'Sirius Black!"

Time seemed to slow down as a large wooden door appeared in the space. Harry reached for the brass door handle, feeling a spark of electricity as he did so and, with a deep breath, creaked the door open.

**A/N: Suspense! Please R&R...I'm hoping to make this a long fic so your support would mean loads! :)**  
** virtual HP cookies to anyone who does! **


	2. Chapter 2

Eyes wide open. Stiff limbs. Tough, forced blinks with what felt like sand in his eyes. Harry was trembling all over, and was having trouble maintaining a sane train of thought.

One side of the room was filled with people – not just any people, but his people. All his people. The ones he loved. His mum, his dad, standing with what must have been their parents – his grandparents. Sirius. Lily was protectively holding a young baby – tinier than any Harry had ever seen before. It had long, fluffy red-brown hair and hazel brown eyes. Lily and James. Their baby?

His sister. Killed before she had even had a chance at life.

Harry could see all this quite clearly, but they did not seem to be able to see him. They were all milling around – blinking and breathing and laughing just as naturally as they would have in life.

This was not the side of the room that most strongly affected him, however.

The other side was a mirror image, practically – James, Lily, Sirius and the older couples all positioned in the exact same way, moving at the same time. These people were not the same though. Their flesh was clearly grey, and looked broken and red in a multitude of places. Their actions were jerky and their eyes flat – like they were posing for a photograph they didn't really want to be in.

His brain whirled with incomprehension. The two sides of the room...did they represent the past? Or the present? Or merely a possibility? His eyes flickered back and forth between the two, wondering what on earth it all meant. Suddenly, harry began to feel a familiar pressing sensation behind his scar, and watched his family helplessly as he sank into an uncomfortable blackness.

"So potter..."sneered a tall, pale man with red eyes whom he had seen not half an hour ago, "I see you have discovered my experiments. you should be proud of my advancements, you know...after all, this is the first time I have spoken directly to you in a vision. You should have paid attention to Dumbledore when he told you to work on your Occlumency..."

Voldemort waved skeletal hand and the visions backdrop changed. Harry and Voldemort were back in the room of requirement, with both sides of people exactly as they were before. Voldemort flipped his hand sharply, bringing a stone archway down on either side of them. Another flick of his boney fingers covered the archway in a waft of thin, silky material. Once this was done, nothing else could be viewed around the arch. Mere blurry figures and whispers were perceivable.

"This is the Voile de Mort or, as the Ministry renamed it, the Veil of Death. That is, of course, the exact same name, but I believe they did not even want a mere anagram of me residing in their precious building. It was one of my greatest projects during my rein, as you can imagine. Everyone I killed's soul was automatically sent to the Voile, appearing in their human form should I need to turn them into an Inferius. It could have been one of the greatest weapons of all time! However, I was defeated, by you - the so-called Chosen One. My project was taken by the Ministry, where half of it was kept - the soul containing half. The other half, the Inferi half, was sent to Azkaban.

As you are not a smart wizard, I shall have to continue my explanation. When the death Eaters broke out of Azkaban, they simply resided in the shapeless passage between the two halves, until such a time that they could break through the other half of the veil - the one in the Ministry. This is how we entered. This is how we escaped. And this is how we regained full control of my Voile.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Wouldn't it be amazing if J K Rowling actually did write HPFF, except she wrote under a secret name, just to see what people's reactions were to her writing?  
I am not her though. nor do I own HP. I was just WARPING YOUR MINDS...**

**err... enjoy!**

CHAPTER 3

"So..." Harry struggled to regain his voice, "so my parents are Inferi? and you've been holding them all this time?" he knew from DADA class that Inferi could only be created using very powerful dark magic, and were difficult to maintain over long periods due to the amount of power they required. he didn't think it was possible for Voldemort to maintain them for that long - he had only gained a new body last year; his powers had been nothing for around 14 years!

"No, stupid boy", cackled Voldemort, "you definitely didn't inherit any of your mother's brains, did you? Mudblood that she was, she was clever. They have been trapped here. it took none of my power to keep them here once I had entered them into the Voile. That's all part of the beauty of it."

"I must admit, of course, that I did not expect you to find this. I was planning to use a certain element of surprise, but now that you're here... How did you discover this, by the way? I made sure nobody except my most faithful Death Eaters knew about it, and I doubt anyone but the Unspeakables and the Minister know about the Ministry half."

Harry's brain was not exactly at its most well functioning at this precise moment, but he did what was his most ingrained instinct when it came to Voldemort - lie.

"Well, you're wrong." he spoke bravely "Dumbledore knows. he knows everything, and he sent me here to assess how far you, uh, had...er...advanced with your plans." Harry hoped Voldemort would not be able to detect his hesitancy in coming up with this lie through the vision however, he had obviously hoped for too much. Voldemort simply cackled again.

"You forget, Potter, that this vision is being controlled by me. I am inside your mind right now, controlling it so all you can see is what I am instructing it to show you. I can see everything you think at this moment, and I can change it in an instant."

Something clicked with Harry at this momentum and before Voldemort had time to react he started throwing all his most powerful happy memories at him. Finding out he was a wizard, sharing sweets with Ron on the train, being chosen for Gryffindor, his first time on a broom - all these memories were dug out and sent at the heartless man. the memories gained speed and power - getting sent his Firebolt, producing his first Patronus, meeting his parents in the Mirror, practising spells with Lupin, finding out Sirius was his godfather, laughing with Hermione and Ron, gazing at Hermione as she worked in the library - wait, where did that one come from? Harry shook it off and kept going. Memories that had not seemed significant to Harry but carried some happy feeling came flooding out from the dustiest corners of his brain. Getting one over on Dudley with some remark, every time he visited Diagon Alley, laughing over some of Hagrid's rock cakes, stroking Fang as he drooled on Harry's lap, staying in the Burrow, feeding Hedwig treats, laughing at Hermione's cutely indignant face when she bought Crookshanks - again, where was he pulling these Hermione memories from? This thought broke down a whole barrier harry didn't even know he had up, and a whole rush of feelings for Hermione drowned his brain. So many conflicting feelings - Harry and Hermione, Hermione and Ron, Harry and Ginny, Ron and Ginny if Harry liked Hermione. Harry felt an intense vacuum feeling - like water being swooshed down a plughole - and knew Voldemort was gone from him.

He crouched on his knees for a few moments, panting and running his hands through his hair. He pushed Hermione to the back of his mind - he didn't exactly need to think about girls right now, for goodness sake. He needed to find a way to get his family out from there. Harry knew the person he really needed to talk to about this - his parents, the Voile, the Death Eaters, the Ministry and Azkaban - but he couldn't. Because he had just smashed up that persons office, and screamed and shouted at him like a madman.

Harry would have to find someone else.

**A/N: If anybody finds any grammar/spelling mistakes, please let me know! R&R for virtual cookies iced with Harry Potter characters faces! *8-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry guys, just a filler, but I will have the next chapter up within one or two days! HP kisses :) xoxox**

CHAPTER 4

Harry ran through all his most trusted adults in his head. Remus was no good - Harry had no idea where he had gone after he had left Hogwarts. He doubted McGonagall would help him - she wasn't exactly the world's greatest rule breaker. And as kind as Mr. Weasley was, there was a reason he had not been promoted higher in the Ministry. Fred and George could definitely be trusted, but he had no idea how talented they were at magic. They weren't even of age - the only experience Harry had of their skills was their Ton Tongue Toffees, and goodness knows they weren't reliable.

But Hermione...

She had the skills. Harry would trust her with his life. He knew she would never tell anyone if he asked her not to, but what about Ron? He felt like he should involve Ron in it somehow - the boys had been friends for close on five years, and yet Harry didn't feel like letting him in on this... He sighed. The two would not be able to work together on this, he was sure. They may have been able to work together, however briefly, at the Ministry, but their friendship seemed constantly on edge at the moment.

Harry stumbled sleepily back to Gryffindor Tower, his head in turmoil. Ron or Hermione? He downed a Dreamless Sleeping potion someone - he assumed a house elf - had placed by his bedside, and was blacked out before his head had hit the pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Harry blinked, squinting through sleep-filled eyes. He fumbled on his night stand for his glasses. Ron was standing in the middle of their circular dormitory, fully dressed and gripping Harry's bed curtains.

"Harry, what the bloody hell did you do last night to make you sleep so long? I thought you were dead mate, you were that hard to wake up!"

Harry grimaced. "That wouldn't be too unlikely at the moment mate, would it, me waking up dead? But sorry, yeah, and thanks for waking me up. I don't fancy explaining to Snape why I was late to his class because of…er…nightmares".

Ron nodded, apparently buying that excuse. Harry didn't feel up to telling Ron that he, his best mate, had been up all night with his other best friend in the room of requirement, basically looking for a way to travel through one of the most obscure and mysterious Wizarding objects known to man, in order to save a number of wrongfully-dead people from the clutches of the infamous Dark Lord. Not at 8:45 on a Tuesday morning.

Harry sighed and heaved himself out of bed, shivering as his feet hit the cold flagstones. He only had to make it through the day, he told himself, until another night when he and Hermione could get perhaps one step closer to Sirius.

Throughout the day, harry had trouble concentrating. Even Ron was spotting his mistakes in Potions, and Hermione didn't have the heart to wake him in History of Magic. He was practically contemplating suicide during Herbology with Professor Sprout – one definitely can't seed a Harnipola pod and have a nap at the same time – those things are vicious!

Just as he was dragging his feet back across the grass towards Transfiguration, a first year ran up to him and wordlessly handed him an envelope before running off again.

"What is it, mate?" asked Ron, craning his head to get a look over Harry's shoulder.

"It's from Dumbledore – he wants to see me now. And Hermione. In his office."

"What does he want you two for?" spluttered Ron, feeling left out again.

"Goodness knows", said Harry, "It's Dumbledore – who ever knows why he does things? And you wouldn't be a love and tell McGonagall where we've gone, would you…? Thanks mate, I owe you one!" he shouted over his shoulder, already speed walking away with Hermione. Ron muttered something, shook his head, and hurried to catch up with Seamus and Dean.

"Well, you two", said Dumbledore evenly, "I imagine you have already realized why I've called you here?"

Harry glanced at Hermione, who was squirming in her seat. She'd never been interrogated by a teacher before, he realized. Crumbs.

"Er…well, perhaps, sir…." Began Harry, slowly, "Perhaps you might like to tell us why you think we're here, before we rush into any…erm, unnecessary confessions?"

Dumbledore chuckled, his blue eyes glinting. "Very well, Harry", he nodded, "I shall explain. It appears, from where I am standing, as if you two have been secretly working in the room of requirement, trying to find a way to bring Sirius, and the other unfortunate souls who are in there, back. You have no doubt already used all kinds of illegal and potentially dangerous magic, which to the best of your judgment seems acceptable under the circumstances."

Hermione audibly gulped, her fingers nervously twisting the edge of her cloak. She looked like she desperately wanted to say something, but it went against every cell in her body to interrupt a teacher, especially Dumbledore, when they were supposedly in trouble.

"…and I have decided I shall", he continued, "in the circumstances, look to the worst of my judgment, and suggest that you research not the history of this object, but instead focus your attention on the origins of a few certain French runes. I am of the understanding that so far you have solely looked for the spells that control the Veil."

Hermione squeaked, her eyes lit up with understanding. Harry, knowing absolutely nothing about runes, just looked baffled, but he assumed that Hermione would explain it to him, and that he would pick it up during the research.

"Thank you sir", Harry said, his voice hollow. He considered a tip from Dumbledore to be of the highest worth – this could lead them to a breakthrough, something they had not spotted before…he wanted to get started right away, to race down to the room of requirement or the library, and practice and learn and read and get that little, antagonizing bit closer.

Dumbledore spoke, as if having heard this thought; "I advise you try to stay awake as possible in all your classes, Mr. Potter. Should your education suffer, or your other teachers notice, I will be forced to pull the two of you off the project and hand the Veil over to the Aurors."

Harry deflated at this but Hermione, ever the optimist, said, "and anyway, you never know Harry, one of the teachers may mention something we could use. I often find that the most important information turns up in the most unexpected ways".

"Very wise, Miss Granger", Dumbledore said nodding, and now I suggest that the two of you get back to class, before Minerva has my head."


End file.
